


singularity

by annuska



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Canon Rewrite, Idiots to Idiot Lovers, Just So We're Clear, M/M, Mental Illness, PTSD, Post-Sonic Adventure 2, Post-Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog (game), Slow Burn, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, Trauma, Yearning, demiboy sonic, eventually, god I'm so bad at tags, more to come - Freeform, nonbinary shadow, violence (non-explicit)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-24 20:54:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22204306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annuska/pseuds/annuska
Summary: How do you grieve for someone you barely knew? How do you reconcile that grief with finding them alive again with no memory of you or their troubled past?How do you explain the magnetic pull to someone you can't remember? How do you find yourself again after death?How do you keep yourself from colliding and being dragged in by someone's gravity? How do you stop yearning for what you can't--what you shouldn't--have?
Relationships: E-123 Omega & Rouge the Bat & Shadow the Hedgehog, Rouge the Bat & Shadow the Hedgehog, Rouge the Bat & Sonic the Hedgehog, Shadow the Hedgehog/Sonic the Hedgehog
Comments: 66
Kudos: 258





	1. preamble, i.: a short summary of a year

**Author's Note:**

> this fic has some tie-ins with two of my other fics: _[We never met but can we have a cup of coffee or something](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19068016)_ , the one-shot Sonadow fic that this one is a spiritual successor to, and _[transcendent, ephemeral](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21005471)_ , a Shadow the Hedgehog character study which this fic contains some nods to (ARK-years-wise).
> 
> neither is required reading, but I would highly reccomend reading at least _We never met_ if you haven't already!

To say Sonic the Hedgehog was fascinated by Shadow the Hedgehog would be a gross understatement.

“Obsessed,” naturally, was too strong a word, but “fascinated” barely began to cover it. Fascinated was optimistic, light and airy, something he might reserve for the way Tails sifted through computer parts or the way Big collected fishing lures and classified them carefully or the way Amy put out a different tarot deck with her crystal weekly. Fascinated was nice, kind, and if obsessed was too strong a word, fascinated was too light a word.

“Preoccupied” might have been the better term.

“Preoccupied” was worrying, heavy and weighted and pacing in aimless circles, definitely what he felt when he thought about the black hedgehog: not simply occupied, but _pre_ occupied, so occupied it preceded him. And it did, since the occupation had started before he even first laid eyes on Shadow, and only intensified thereafter—wondering _how_ he had gotten into this mess, _who_ had tarnished his reputation, and then _what_ Shadow was, _where_ had he come from, and _why_ he did what he did, and now… now, _when_ he would stop thinking about him every waking moment, and even some _non-_ waking moments.

Shadow was, after all, dead.

But it had only made the preoccupation stronger.

The _why_ still plagued Sonic, but differently now.

The _why_ used to concern itself with stolen Chaos Emeralds and flashing shows of power and threats of earthly extermination, life and planet alike. Now it concerned itself with changes of heart and preventable sacrifices and the failings of a perceived hero and restitutions that simply couldn’t be made.

Not that he wouldn’t try. He just didn’t know how, and sometimes, it paralyzed him. Sometimes it paralyzed him so that he couldn’t speak, couldn’t express thought; sometimes, so that he couldn’t feel emotion; sometimes, so that his legs wouldn’t move when he wanted them to, only shook in place and cemented him where he stood—or sat—or lay.

When he wasn’t paralyzed, he didn’t feel much better.

How do you make restitution to someone who’s gone? Someone with no surviving family, no ties to the living— _except_ for those who would fail him? There was no one to apologize to, only a fleeting ghost in his dreams, and Sonic could barely shoulder the weight of his guilt.

It just _wasn_ _’t fair_. It wasn’t fair that Shadow had made a genuine effort to change, that he had been misdirected, that he was shouldering his own weight and it distorted his view, that despite all these things he still paid an unfair price. Fighting by his side, Sonic had been sure that they would return to ARK victorious, that he would convince Shadow to let him show the Ultimate Life-Form how beautiful Earth and life and existence could be. He felt that spark, he _knew_ he was meant to help Shadow, to guide him, to be… a friend. He was _sure_.

And that made it hurt all the more.

It only took a year for Sonic to move past denial and land on reluctant, dissatisfied guilt-tinged acceptance—and only because he _had_ to.

Grief is never a linear process, and it never truly ends, or so said a friend as he sat on her floor, spilling his heart out because she was the only one who even began to understand, and the only one who had come close to knowing Shadow. It wasn’t that none of his other friends could sympathize, that they hadn’t been saddened, but Rouge _knew_. She just knew.

And she knew more about Shadow than Sonic did.

But never enough. Never enough to answer all the questions Sonic had, never enough to answer the _why_. She filled in as many gaps as she could, about the _technically_ still-classified Project Shadow, about what had happened aboard the ARK half a century ago, about the pieces here and there that she had gathered—though he was sure there were things she withheld—but it never answered the _why_.

Sonic knew the question would drive him insane if he continued to think about it, to be so preoccupied with it, but even a year later, it lingered at the back of his mind.

At least he had managed to push it back that far.

And when he did, the paralysis melted, little by little: words returned to him, his neurotransmitters relayed thoughts, the numbness eased away, and his legs no longer refused to go. Or maybe it was the other way around—maybe as the paralysis melted away, it cleared the roadblock in his mind that had prevented him from storing the grief away in a box far away and inaccessible, or at least as difficult to access as one could be expected to a mere year after a loss. (If the loss was even _his_ to feel. That part, the guilt of mourning what isn’t yours to mourn—that, he could never pack away.)

Whichever it was ironically made the grief and regret easier to hide.

No longer did friends cautiously ask if he was alright, if he needed a distraction. Invitations to activities became less about the worry and more about the enjoyment. Group gatherings became less about rerouting a feeling and more about laughing and sharing.

It was easier to hide from himself, too. There was still a tinge, a hint, just _lingering_ , but somehow, life was livable again, and eventually, he didn’t feel guilty for living it. Not _overwhelmingly_ guilty, anyway.

And so he settled in to his reluctant, dissatisfied, guilt-tinged acceptance, and it seemed, for a while, that the cyclone of stages of grief had settled into a faint wind; that, while he may still feel denial, bargaining, anger, depression, the baseline was acceptance, of a sort—and it considerably softened the blow of every other non-linear stage.

And so he was completely unprepared for what the next year would bring.

Sonic hadn’t done much adventuring post-ARK.

Shadow’s death aside, space had proven to be more exhausting than he remembered, and the general _hopelessness,_ the _misanthropy_ of all that had transpired—the ARK “incident” of 50 years ago, the manipulation of a living being to carry out destruction, the inequitable death of that being—it was all too much. It was too much to see, that people could kill and maim and harm indiscriminately and remorselessly and that those who fought against such misanthropy weren’t saved for it.

He needed a long, quiet break, without the weight of the world on his shoulders. Without seeing so much unmitigated, unfeeling, complete… _evil_.

The year’s absence of any world-threatening, catastrophic events was pure serendipity.

There were, of course, the non-world-threatening events, the ones easily attended to without Chaos Emeralds or time travel or anything of that variety. No robot factories hiding in spheroid space stations, no disruptions to the future, no ancient gods seeking vengeance, no cannons set to destroy the earth. He knew it wouldn’t last, that there must have been _something_ building up in the dark, and he had a good idea _who_ was building up that something, but he really needed it to not happen any time soon.

Not when his entire world view was being shaken. Not when his usual coping mechanism of _ignoring the problem until it goes away, or goes numb_ wasn’t working. Not when he felt so unusually, uncharacteristically, completely… _vulnerable_.

No, he wouldn’t be ready for something like _that_ again until he’d had time to dwell, to linger and ruminate, to think about it so much that he got sick of it and needed something to do, to exhaust every single possibility and thought and meaning and reason until he was just dried up and in need of fulfillment.

So he did, for months, and then eventually, he dried up. He thought and ruminated himself empty, and he needed to fill the void.

So it was that one year post-ARK, Sonic jumped (literally) at the chance to take down a new army of Eggmechs, to destroy a new super-weapon, and most importantly, cause millions of dollars of damage to yet another Eggbase. He could always count on the good doctor to deliver. (Or whoever was impersonating the good doctor, as had now become evident. They hadn’t quite figured that out yet.)

What he hadn’t counted on was the sight awaiting him at the edge of the forest.

He hadn’t counted on seeing Shadow the Hedgehog again.

But there he was.

 _Alive_.


	2. preamble, ii.; sleepless fever

Sleep deprivation. That had to be it.

It had been a while since Sonic was able to get a good nap in, or even a few hours overnight—and when he did nod off, he was plagued by unsettling dreams, the kind that take hold while you’re still semi-conscious and make it impossible to distinguish between dream and reality.

The thing about grief is that even when you’ve managed to rise from the depths of it, pull off the sludge of it that encapsulated you, you can never fully rid yourself of it; you think you’ve gotten every last unpleasant speck, but then, out of nowhere, you find a piece you’ve missed. You find it magnified through the lens of an association, a sensation. A word, a thing, a smell, a sight, a sound. Sonic found it through the magnifying lens of a lush forest, the amalgamation of greens and browns blurring past, the fresh, crisp scent in the air rushing past him.

Oh, sure, it wasn’t the same kind of forest. It wasn’t as dense, as open, but it was enough. There were trees, vines, bodies of water. It was enough. He had pulled back on his speed for the sake of his two teammates already, but as they moved through the forest, he felt bogged down further by a miserable patch of sludge that he had somehow missed in his twelve months of coming to a reluctant, unsatisfied, guilt-tinged acceptance. It pulled him down, trying to drag him back to another time and place, where he had struggled against an apparition not only physically, but on some inaccessible metaphysical level as well.

Mix in a little sleep deprivation, half-asleep hallucination, and it was only logical that he would see blurs of blueish-black and red mix in with the greens and browns. Logical, but distressing; it dragged him back to a place he thought he left behind, a place he didn’t want to visit again—not so soon, anyway. 8,760 hours sounded like a lot, sure, but it wasn’t enough time, not enough space.

“Ugh,” he groaned, more audibly than intended.

“What is it, Sonic?” Tails, lagging about two or three meters behind Sonic, frowned at the blue hedgehog. “We’ll still make it if we slow down for a bit…”

Sonic shook his head, both in response and to shake another glimpse of a specter away. “No point in stopping now, we’re almost outta here.”

“If you say so…” There was an audible sigh from the young fox but he didn’t persist, thankfully. Sonic really didn’t want to explain.

It had been hard enough to talk about the first time, when he was just having dreams and not straight-up hallucinations. It had been hard enough to even put into words why the death of someone that he barely knew for a few days had hit him so hard, caused him so much grief—or how and why he missed him so much. It was just a feeling, a yearning, something that had snapped into place the second Shadow offered him his help, and cemented as they fought alongside each other. It wasn’t that Tails—or anyone else, for that matter—didn’t try and understand; it was that Sonic could never word it right, he never felt as if he had properly vented it out, never—

“Earth to Sonic, this is mission control. Come in, space cadet.”

Sonic scoffed, glancing back at Knuckles. “Oh, you’ve got jokes, huh?”

“Yeah, I’ve only been trying to get your attention for a minute now.” Knuckles grabbed Sonic by the shoulder, turning him around and forcing him to stop beneath the canopy of one of the jungle’s oversized leaves. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on.” Sonic shrugged Knuckles’ hand off of his shoulder, fixing him with a look. “What’re you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you not being all here.” Knuckles pulled his hand back and crossed his arms. “We can’t just show up to Eggman’s base and risk you getting hurt because you’re not alert to an incoming attack, or tripping an alarm, or—” He let out a long, slow breath. “I’m asking as your friend, Sonic. What’s going on?”

Sonic stared at Knuckles for a long moment, then shifted his gaze toward Tails, who stood next to Knuckles staring at the ground. Feeling Sonic’s gaze on him, Tails glanced up, and said nothing, but there was obvious worry in his eyes and his tails hovered apprehensively at his sides. Sonic closed his eyes and inhaled slowly. He thought he was done with the worried, pitying looks.

“Yeah, alright,” he conceded, lifting a hand to his temple and rubbing it before opening his eyes again. Specks of white floated in his vision and he rubbed his eyes in an attempt to chase them away. “Just having trouble readjusting, y’know? To doing all…” Sonic gestured vaguely, “… _this_ again.”

He wasn’t technically lying: it _had_ been difficult getting back into the swing of things (figuratively and literally) after so long without any large-scale endeavors. But he also wasn’t about to mention that he was seeing ghosts in the surrounding forestry.

The explanation seemed to appease his friends well enough, though, as they both relaxed their stances, Knuckles lowering his arms down and Tails’ tails falling away from either of his sides.

“Sure.” Knuckles shrugged, glancing back out around the jungle. “Let’s get out of this place and find somewhere to chill out for a bit. And for you to nap. Don’t think I didn’t see those yawns or catch that attitude.”

“You have been kinda grumpy, Sonic,” Tails added softly.

“Yeah. I have been.” Sonic shook his head. The longer he stood still, the heavier his body felt, and the harder it was to keep his eyelids open. A nap sounded incredible—or it did, until he thought about the dreams he’d been having again recently. “Sorry, bud. Just like, punch me in the arm next time I’m a jerk, okay?”

“Umm…”

“I’ll do it,” Knuckles volunteered, grinning.

“Of course you would,” Sonic teased. He smacked Knuckles’ shoulder playfully and pretended to wince at the obviously restrained reciprocation. Satisfied that Tails and Knuckles were content with his answers, Sonic lifted his arms, linked his hands, and stretched as he lifted his chin toward a tangle of vines a few meters away. “Looks dense but I think we can cut through there to save some time. Shouldn’t be too hard for you guys, right?”

Knuckles rolled his eyes.

“I could literally just fly over it if I didn’t have to carry you guys…” Tails mumbled under his breath, following Sonic and Knuckles out from under the canopy.

The rain had let up long enough and the clouds had parted just enough for the sun to dry most of the slickness off of the vines, making them easily cut through and catapulted off of. About halfway through, the vines naturally split away from each other as the trees they hung from became fewer and farther apart, leaving behind a more visible path for the trio to traverse down. The ground was still littered with fallen tree trunks, brambles, and shrubbery, but now there was adequate air space to easily leap over them, or dig them out of the way, or fly over them.

The path eventually came to a head in front of a wall of rock and dirt and moss, too steep to climb but not so tall that it couldn’t be cleared—unconventionally, anyway. The first few attempts, consisting mostly of Tails attempting to carry Sonic and Knuckles over the plateau, then one at a time, then with a launch he wasn’t quite strong enough to follow through on, were obvious but ineffective.

“Alright, new plan,” Sonic grumbled, rubbing his head after failing to land on his feet. “Tails, you go ahead and wait for us. Knuckles, we’re backtracking.”

“Ugh, of course we are. Because why not.”

“Oh, stop grumbling.” Sonic waved to Tails before grabbing Knuckles by the arm and speeding back down the path. He skidded to a stop some meters back, and turned Knuckles around, pointing up at a tangle of vines strung between a few trees on either side of the path. “I’m gonna swing up there, flip around a few times, fling you across, drop down, run up the closest tree to the cliff and launch myself up. So get ready.”

And that was exactly what they did: Sonic sprung up to the vines above, wound tightly enough around the tree branches that his weight was adequately supported, and he did, indeed, flip around said vines and branches three times before grabbing Knuckles’ hands and immediately flinging him forward. Knuckles caught the draft halfway across and was able to glide the rest of the way to the upper part of the cliff, climbing the rest of the way up.

And Sonic dropped down, and dashed toward the targeted tree, and—

and this time, the flash of black and red had definition, and there was a glint of gold to go with it.

Sonic had barely enough time to avoid collision with the tree as he snapped back to reality, and the millisecond of distraction was enough to throw off his footing and cause him to misstep. He still managed to run up the tree, but the angle was wrong, and he had no time to self-correct as his body instinctively launched itself off of the trunk and square into the edge of the cliff.

His hands grabbed and dug reflexively, and he winced as he felt the collision of his skull with the hard-packed dirt and rock. As he pulled back from the cliff, hanging by his fingers and head throbbing from the blunt force trauma, the only thing Sonic could think about was how tired he was, and he quickly realized how heavily he has breathing. He knew from experience that the impact wasn’t bad enough to cause a concussion, so a nap wouldn’t hurt. If he was going to see things anyway, why not relegate them back to the disquieting dreams where they belong?

The thought felt eternal, and his fingers were sliding, dragging dirt and grass with them, and for a moment, Sonic couldn’t remember what he was doing. Why was he climbing up the side of a cliff when he could just drop down and curl up under one of those nice, massive leaves? The weather was so _nice_. It smelled like it would start raining again. God, a nap in the rain sounded _amazing_.

The seemingly-eternal thoughts dissipated as two pairs of hands grabbed his arms and pulled him up out of the mental fog and over the side of the cliff to reunite with his teammates. He gave them a weak, thankful smile, but didn’t rise off his knees.

Instead, the blue hedgehog fell onto his back and stared up at the sky, trying to catch his breath. Each expansion of his lungs felt heavy, and his throbbing head didn’t help. He closed his eyes for a few moments, and a sense of calm began to envelope him, but then he fell—and jolted back awake, still in the same place.

Sleep didn’t sound so amazing anymore.

Sonic shifted his gaze to his two friends as they stared over him, and exhaled another heavy breath. “I miscalculated.”

“By a lot,” Tails added, helping Sonic to his feet.

Sonic dusted his legs off, looking on ahead. “At least it’s easy going from here.”

“Yeah,” Tails said, typing something out across the screen of his handheld device. He held it up for Sonic and Knuckles to see, pointing at a path along the map. “We’re getting real close, too. We should be able to make it in less than a day if we keep at this pace.” He paused, then added, “Accounting for a break, of course.”

“Good work, buddy,” Sonic grinned, putting his hand on top of Tails’ head and mussing his fur up while holding onto one side of the handheld. It was slightly bigger than a scientific calculator, and it wouldn’t surprise Sonic if that’s exactly what Tails had used as a base. “Still can’t believe you put this together in less than a year.”

Tails smiled sheepishly, but allowed some of his well-deserved pride to slip out of the smile. “It’s just a prototype… The version I really want to focus on is bigger, but more functional—”

“Hey, sorry to interrupt, but,” Knuckles cleared his throat, “we’re on a tight schedule here, so can we walk and talk? We need to find Eggman before anyone—”

Knuckles’s sentence came to an abrupt end as he, Tails, and Sonic froze in perfect sync, all aware of the feeling of eyes looming over them.

“’Before anyone’ _what_ , exactly?”

The three turned and were met with the sight of a familiar figure standing on the plateau above them, drawing an audible groan from Knuckles—because, _of course_ it would be Rouge. _Of course_ it would.

 _Of course it would_ , Sonic thought.

“Seriously?” Knuckles called back. “Shouldn’t you be stealing some priceless cultural artifact?”

Rouge scoffed audibly, crossing her arms. “Shouldn’t you be guarding yours?” Smirking, she fluttered down into a sitting position on the cliffside, crossing her legs and resting her chin on a wrist. “Puh- _lease_. Hey, Tails. Hey, Sonic.” She waved at the two, but frowned as Sonic looked away. “Anyway, I think it’s so noble of you boys to chase down the Doctor again, and I do respect your long history with him, but unfortunately, I’m going to have to ask you to step back this time.”

“Excuse me?” Knuckles asked.

Sonic looked back at Rouge, unable to decide on a tone to address her with, and so his voice came out flatter than he intended. “What are you doing?”

Rouge sighed, lifted herself up, and floated down to where the three of them stood, though she declined to touch upon the ground, instead crossing her legs in the air again as she examined her nails. “It’s just that I have some important business with him and can’t have you all beating him senseless before I get my information, now, can I?”

“What kind of business, Rouge?”

Rouge looked back at the sound of Sonic’s voice, now with a sharper edge than before, and again, she frowned—but instead of shooting back one of her smooth retorts, she just stared at him. Why was she staring at him? She blinked, and the look was gone, replaced with something less playful and more somber. “It’s… government-related. That’s all I can tell you. You have to trust m—”

“NEGATIVE. IT IS PERSONAL.”

“Hey!” Tails shouted, nearly dropping his handheld as he threw his arm out in the direction of this new, synthesized voice. “It’s an E-series robot! It’s one of Eggman’s!”

And surely enough, it was: a later entry, undoubtedly, but an E-series robot nonetheless, standing on the same ledge where Rouge had stood solo only a minute before. Rouge covered her face with a hand and groaned loudly and irritably.

“Omega, I told you—”

“Sonic, she’s lying!” Knuckles shouted, pointing up at the robot as if Sonic hadn’t seen it. “She’s got one of that egomaniac’s creations with her!”

“Guys…” Sonic mumbled, once again struggling to stand upright. He had some fleeting thought, some kind of flashback to a place two or three years ago, obscured by fog and the white spots that were in his vision again and the din of arguing surrounding him and the fading alertness of being jolted back awake. “I don’t know, Knux, maybe it’s—”

He stopped talking as everything around him became silent, and for a moment, he wondered if his hearing had stopped working too. It’d happened before: he’d lost enough blood that his ears rang and he couldn’t hear anything else. Sonic clumsily patted himself over, trying to figure out if he’d been injured and just didn’t remember.

 _Oh, my god_ , he barely heard someone—Tails?—say.

 _Fuck_ , he barely heard someone—definitely Rouge—say.

He stared at them, followed Tails’ gaze up at the robot and hedgehog on the plateau, then shook his head and looked back at Rouge.

“Sorry, Rouge, but we’ve gotta… gotta…” Sonic trailed off and stopped. He retraced the path of his gaze, and stopped. His eyes, his breathing, his heart—everything stopped.

The robot and hedgehog.

Just a step behind the E-series robot stood Shadow the Hedgehog.

Sonic was only vaguely aware of his legs finally giving out before the force of falling into Tails and Knuckles’ arms jolted him back awake again—but not enough that he could push himself back onto his feet—and in fact, neither of them made a move to push him upright. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Sonic knew why, but all that he could access was a haze as his and Shadow’s eyes met. Shadow’s gaze transfixed him and he too stood unmoving. The red was dull and the gold almost non-existent. There was no clear emotion to his look. There was something lacking behind his eyes.

He just stared and the black hedgehog’s vacant stare bore holes into Sonic’s chest but he couldn’t tear his eyes away despite the sear.

The silence lingered, filling the spaces between them thickly, and no one dared cut through it.

Well, no one present who had any history with any of the others present, anyway.

“WE ARE WASTING TIME.” The E-series robot—apparently named Omega—lifted his arms and withdrew his makeshift metal fingers, replacing them with canons formed of multiple barrels, and aimed them down at the trio’s feet. “ABSCOND IMMEDIATELY OR PERISH.”

“Omega, zip it!” Rouge snapped. “Put those away!”

Omega withdrew the guns slowly.

Rouge rubbed her eyes and turned to face the three again, her tone softening. “This isn’t what it looks like, I promise, and I will tell you everything I can _when_ I can—” she shot a pointed look in response to the face Knuckles made at her, then looked at Sonic, and softened again “—and I’m sorry. You weren’t supposed to find out like thi—”

“No,” Sonic said.

He pushed himself up off of Tails and Knuckles, edging their support away with either shoulder, eyes locked with Shadow the entire time. Shadow continued to stand impassively despite the biting stare Sonic had fixed him with. Finally, Sonic broke his gaze away and shook his head, now directing the biting stare at the ground. “He isn’t real.”

“Sonic—” Tails reached forward for Sonic’s shoulder, but Sonic shoved it off.

“No,” he said again, and only now did he become aware of his shaking limbs and clenched fist and how his claws dug into himself even through his dirty gloves. “He isn’t real. This isn’t right. This is wrong.”

“ROUGE. I WILL INITIATE BATTLE MODE IN TEN SECONDS IF THEY DO NOT ABSCOND.”

“You’re going to let your big Eggman-robot pal shoot us up, huh, bat girl?”

“Sonic, we have to get out of here, let’s go—”

“SEVEN SECONDS.”

“You don’t even know the whole story, echidna! Omega, I swear to _god_ if you don’t—”

“Then make him stop, please!”

“Stop scaring the kid, Rouge! Call it off!”

“FOUR.”

How could he have thought he’d lost his hearing? Everything was so loud even through the ringing. THREE. The loud, endless, high pitched screech that just wouldn’t stop. The thoughts. The burning. TWO. Oh, god, his body burned. His arms and legs and head and forehead and fists and his chest. Everything was so wrong again—how could he have let it go so wrong?

“Rouge!”

“Omega! _Shadow, stop hi_ —”

“ONE. BATTLE MO—”

Omega’s voice was drowned out as Sonic’s scream tore through the air and the hedgehog launched himself off the ground, colliding with Shadow and rolling head-over-heel with him far past the robot and his threats and his friends and their arguing. Even though he had caught Shadow off guard, Shadow was quick to react, grabbing Sonic’s hands and flipping him back-first onto the ground before jumping to his feet.

Sonic groaned. He should’ve known better.

Leaping upright, Sonic took a step back from Shadow, and for a moment, the two stood and stared at each other again. Sonic heaved, narrowing his eyes at whatever was standing in front of him. There was no other explanation: _it_ wasn’t real and _it_ wasn’t right. It couldn’t be: Sonic had watched Shadow die and had lived with that image for more than three-hundred-sixty-five days of hell. He didn’t know what Rouge thought she was up to, but he wasn’t going to stand by and let her make some kind of mockery of Shadow and his sacrifices.

And he _knew_ Eggman had something to do with it, and he _definitely_ wasn’t going to let Rouge catch up to him first now.

This time, it was Shadow who struck first, and if Sonic hadn’t been thinking and feeling so intensely, he would have been able to dodge the attack entirely—but he didn’t, and though Shadow only caught hold of his shoulder, it was enough for him to fling the blue hedgehog back against a tree and knock the wind out of him a second time. Not yet content, Shadow pushed up against Sonic with his arm, pinning him and holding him there.

Sonic coughed, and for a moment, the adrenaline dipped and his head swayed and a hot, angry nausea rose up at the back of his throat, but it cleared away quickly enough as Sonic stared into Shadow’s eyes. He just couldn’t figure out what was so wrong about them, but there was something very wrong. There was something gone.

Shadow stared right back, but the anger on his face wasn’t as hot as the anger Sonic felt in his chest. If anything, his expression was frustrated, and for a second, he searched Sonic’s face even as Sonic tried to maintain eye contact—and when he finally did lift his eyes again, he opened his mouth slightly to speak—but before he could, he groaned, grabbing at his head as it fell. His stance weakened, he stumbled slightly, and Sonic took his chance.

He braced his arms against the tree and jumped, slamming both feet into Shadow and sending him sprawling across the jungle floor. Landing wobbily, Sonic corrected his stance and ran blindly for the black hedgehog, too overwhelmed to even know what he was going to do once he got there. He just knew Shadow was down and unmoving and open. He decided at the last minute that he would skid around and fling Shadow by the arms over the side of the plateau, hoping to send a clear message to Rouge that he wasn’t going to put up with whatever _bullshit_ this was.

That was his plan, at least.

What _really_ happened didn’t go so smoothly.

Shadow threw his arms out at the last minute and caught one of Sonic’s legs in one of his hands, causing Sonic to hit the ground face-first with a loud thud, triggering the throbbing pain again. Shadow refused to let the leg go even as he stood, using it to draw Sonic closer to him and grab at his back spines, pulling him up even as they cut into his hand. His grip was tight, and Sonic knew he couldn’t pull away—and so he pushed himself back hard against Shadow, hoping to pierce the skin on his chest, but thumping the back of his head into Shadow’s chin instead, stunning them both long enough for Shadow to stumble backwards and fall.

Except, he didn’t hit the ground.

No, he fell back against a loose gathering of vines and leaves and mushrooms, landing squarely on the back of a giant frog. The frog’s skin was too thick for Shadow’s own quills to pierce through, but not to sink into, and so Sonic immediately pulled Shadow’s hand off of his back and rolled to face his opponent—and that was the last thing he remembered doing before being launched like a projectile through the air.

Tails would’ve said it was an impressive distance even with his and Shadow’s combined weights. Knuckles would’ve told him he was an idiot for letting his guard down and letting his rage get the better of him. They both would have reminded him to watch out for the launchpad frogs.

Sonic would’ve told them both to shove it.

An uncomfortable tunnel of wind formed around them—oppressive and suffocating, unlike the ones Sonic voluntarily made—only to drop them several meters away into a denser area of the jungle, far off from the trails either of them had originally taken. Sonic felt himself bounce off of something as a spray of water followed, and then he felt himself sliding rapidly along the ground, dragging loose dirt with him until he finally came to a stop. He waited for the momentum to flow over him before opening his eyes.

For some reason, at some point in their fall, Sonic had wrapped his arms tightly around Shadow. Who now lay atop him, head pressed into Sonic’s chest as he too processed what had just happened.

Sonic let his arms fall.

Shadow pulled his arms out from beneath Sonic and let his hands rest on the ground.

Rain began to pour over them in sheets.

Sonic didn’t try and push Shadow off of him. Now that his adrenaline had passed, the anger had left with it, and now, there was only an amplified ache, as if the wind had pushed through whatever hole lingered in his heart. Now, it just hurt to think about Eggman and Rouge taking advantage of Shadow’s death like that. It just hurt to be convinced this wasn’t real because he had felt Shadow slip out of his hands and watched him die.

But selfishly, he wanted to pretend it was, just for a moment.

Sonic let his head fall back and closed his eyes, and even as the rain soaked his face, the tears still streamed hotly down its sides. His heartbeat slowed, and though his breaths were still heaving and desperate, they didn’t feel as shallow or heavy, only sharp—and as he let the rain wash all of the haze and noise and ringing away, soon all that he could feel was the cold droplets of water, Shadow’s heartbeat coming between every one of Sonic’s, and the rise and fall of Shadow’s chest as he lay atop Sonic.

Sonic just stayed there and took it all in for a good minute—and then his eyes shot open.

Shadow was breathing.

He had a heartbeat.

He wasn’t fake.

“Shadow?” Sonic whispered, pulling up just slightly and resting back against his arms.

Shadow lifted his head slowly, and looked at Sonic, and now the something that was missing from Shadow’s eyes didn’t sicken him because it meant he was fake; it sickened him because it meant something much worse, and he didn’t know what yet.

“You’re—it’s—” Sonic stammered. His words all felt like a slur that slid down from his mouth and hit the jungle floor meaninglessly. “It’s… it’s you. You’re… here.”

Shadow stared at him with that look again, and then finally, spoke.

“Who are you?”

Sonic’s heart sank into the pits of his stomach. He realized the impassiveness hadn’t been impassiveness at all; it had been frustration and confusion. “You… don’t… know me?”

Shadow sat up slowly. “No… I… I don’t know you.” Shadow winced, grabbing his head again, and seemed to wait for something to pass before speaking again. “Who… are you?”

Fingers curling into his palms, Sonic bit his lip until it bled, and his voice came in a barely-audible whisper: “What… do you remember?”

“I… don’t.”

Sonic’s blood ran cold, and now the air that had pushed through the hole in his heart blew through the empty cavity with an iciness even colder than his blood, and all the while his heart was still dissolving in the stomach acid it had fallen into. The edges of his eyes burned in contradiction and the back of his neck flushed hotly and he was overcome with cold and hot all at once.

It wasn’t just _something_ that was missing.

Shadow was missing.

And Sonic had let it happen. He’d let Shadow slip—let him fall—and if him dying hadn’t been enough, here he was, somehow alive again, but empty. It was evident on his face, in his eyes, in his tone. He heard Shadow ask him the same question again, but Sonic didn’t want to answer. He couldn’t answer. All he could do was fall back to the ground, staring vacantly at the sky even as the raindrops fell into and burned his eyes.

There was a long moment of silence, interrupted by distant, familiar chattering, and then the distinct, quiet hum of the flames on Shadow’s shoes firing up, followed by the rustling of foliage.

Even as he felt himself being pulled up off the ground, he couldn’t make out any of the words being said to him. He could barely keep his eyes open by now, and felt the heaviness return to his limbs as sleep finally began to overtake him, but all he could think was: _How could I have let it go so wrong?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shadow scored a critical miss on his investigation check to see if he could de-escalate the situation and sonic took an attack of opportunity.
> 
> sonic later scored a critical miss on not being an emotional wreck.
> 
> this week's chapter brought to you by my third relisten of the adventure zone: balance.


	3. preamble, iii.: sever all I knew

None of them said it, but they all agreed to take a much needed rest as soon as they’d cleared the forest.

And it similarly went unsaid that no, he did not want to talk about it, and so his teammates respectfully stepped back and allowed him his space.

And then he took even more space, unable to stay around them and hear their hushed conversation, even if he couldn’t make out what was being said about him.

The terrain outside of the forest was clearer, but rougher: the grass became dirt and rock, the relatively short cliffsides became upward-sloping terrain, and the clouds hung heavily in the sky even as the sun sank below the hills. It might have been emptier, with the trees and vines replaced by scattered stones here and there, but at least the sunset was still beautiful even among the dusty relics.

It was only the second sunset he remembered.

It might have only been his second sunset ever.

There had been moments over the past forty-eight hours in which Shadow struggled to come to terms with the very concept of existence—specifically, his—and whether it—or he—was real or not. Initially, it had been simple confusion, the inherent existentialism of awakening with no memory—but there was something about seeing an android clone of yourself broken apart and sparking its last remnants of robotic life that was infinitely more jarring than amnesia.

And if that hadn’t been enough—

Shadow looked down at his hand and bent it inward with barely a wince. Not even two whole hours ago there had been a deep gash in his palm, bleeding enough that red showed through his gloves even in the pouring rain, but now… now, it was closed up as if the incident had happened days ago and the only remaining tear was in the fabric of his glove.

He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes.

That hedgehog…

How could it be that just the sight of him had triggered something so deep inside him that dwelling on it for even a moment brought on a migraine? And what was with him, attacking Shadow only to turn around and ask if Shadow knew him? What was his deal? What was with the anger turned to weeping? What was…

What was with _him_ , unable to push himself up off of the blue hedgehog for an eternity of a moment?

Why did his name feel like a splitting chasm in his head?

 _Sonic_.

Why did Sonic think Shadow would have recognized him? Shadow had no idea how long he had even been in that dark, seemingly abandoned base, if he had ever had a life before it, if he was even actually… Shadow. How could he call himself Shadow when he didn’t know anything about Shadow—if he didn’t know if he was full of circuits and wires instead of blood and flesh, if the gash and blood was something only he could see—programmed into him—or entirely synthetic, if he or the real Shadow even had anything to remember, if—

He doubled over, burying his face in his hands and pushing his palms hard against his eyes to stop the sharp pain behind them, but there was no amount of pressure in the world to relieve the piercing pain behind his eyes or in his head. He could only wait for it to pass, for the heat to sweep over his head and the lightheadedness to leave. He thought about the migraines in terms of flesh and blood and synapses and neurons, but he worried it was metal and plastic and circuits and wires overheating, sparking and overloading his sensory system.

The gray-out passed, the sharpness dulled, and Shadow lowered his hands down, waiting for the blackness to clear out of his vision.

Thinking about it was a waste of time. He already knew that. Searching in the dark for something intangible was a fool’s errand, and so was thinking about that hedgehog—about Sonic. It was apparent that the blue hedgehog wouldn’t give him answers, if he had any, and neither would Rouge, if she had any.

Slowly, Shadow rose off the ground, and gave the sinking sun one last look before turning to the distant castle where the ruins and intermittent stone path led. Only one person could give him answers, and he couldn’t risk someone else getting there first because one disquieting run-in had deepened his existential crisis.

He had no time to think, or feel. Only to act.

☰

☴

Sonic woke up groggy and heavy.

He figured that he must have been out for a few hours, judging by the darkness he awoke to. He pushed himself up with his forearms and elbows, and caught sight of Tails and Knuckles’s faces illuminated by the glow of Tails’s handheld some meters away. They were too far for him to hear even whispers of their conversation, but Sonic had a short list of guesses as to what they were talking about.

Overtaken by the weight of his grogginess, Sonic lay back on the ground, trying to keep his eyes open as he looked up at the sky above him. It wasn’t raining anymore, but the clouds lingered, obscuring any view of the stars. He rolled onto his side, cushioning his head with his hands as he stared into the thick black of the jungle.

He didn’t even know where to start with his own thoughts.

Trying to navigate the labyrinth of his own brain was as overwhelming a task as he could imagine, with all the sludge that just seemed to be reproducing itself exponentially, and his poor sleep keeping his mind and body from properly resetting, and how the naps only made it feel like he’d been living a long unending day over the course of 24 of 48 or 72 or however many hours, and the cognitive dissonance, and _Shadow was alive and remembered nothing_.

At least, nothing about him.

Sonic flicked a chipped piece of rock across the ground. _As if he’d want to remember me_.

Sonic had, after all, been only a brief flash in Shadow’s life—a brief flash who had let him fall and die and then had spent the next twelve months conjuring up visions of all the what-ifs and constructing a grand vision of what _could have been_ , what _might have been_ , if only he’d done what he was supposed to, if only he’d been the hero to Shadow that he was to everyone else, if only _if only_ —

Sonic let his tense shoulders slump, and rolled onto his back again, the heaviness of anger weighing him down. Anger at the uncontrollable forces that allowed for so much misfortune and misery—anger at himself for everything he’d done from ARK to tackling a revenant Shadow—anger at Rouge for betraying his trust.

He clenched his jaw at the thought of it: all the times he had secretly confided in her, showing her the most vulnerable side of himself, and her _only_. How raw and open he had been—how she seemed to understand and sympathize, _empathize_ , even—how she knew about the guilt and the yearning and the what-ifs, only to not tell him that Shadow was _alive?_

And how long had she known? How _did_ she know—where did she find Shadow? How long had he been— _how_ did he—did he ever even—

Sonic’s heart clenched tightly in his chest.

He had to stop thinking about it. He had to.

There wasn’t any time to think about it, or what would come of it, not when he also didn’t know what Eggman was up to with fakes of himself running around. There was a flash of a thought, a crossing between thoughts of Shadow and the fakes and his initial refusal to believe it was _him_ , and with it an aching hollowness in his stomach, but whether it was guilt or something else entirely, he couldn’t tell. He didn’t give himself time to tell. He pushed it back, far back, deep into the dusty corners of his mind with the rest of his sorrows and unpleasant memories and feelings. Nobody needed any of that, least of all from _him_.

Not him. Certainly not his friends. Definitely not… Shadow.

Sonic had had his chance to do the Ultimate Life-form right, and fell short. Even if he _did_ allow himself to think about it, it felt wrong to have another chance, to put Shadow through the danger of associating with him again. It was one thing to work with Knuckles, or even Tails; they knew their limits, when to step back, when to pull Sonic back. But Shadow—he was too good for his _own_ good. He pushed himself too far. He had no qualms sacrificing himself. He almost seemed to… punish himself.

Knowing Sonic would only give him more chances to do so.

Sonic couldn’t put him through that again.

And no matter how upset he might have been with Rouge, at least Sonic knew she could handle Shadow, that she could guide him, help him have a different life, the one he deserved to have lived. And maybe that was why she didn’t tell him; maybe she knew Sonic wasn’t good for him. He couldn’t blame her—he shouldn’t have felt so angry. But he did. He shouldn’t have felt so hurt. But he did.

He had to stop thinking about it.

Sonic exhaled, tore his eyes away from the sky, and pushed himself up with his palms. He stood, brushed the dirt off himself, and joined his teammates.

He had to stop feeling it.

The dry, dusty landscape continued on toward a graveyard of scattered stone: a dilapidated pathway, broken columns, _actual_ gravestones. Intricate carvings in the columns depicted skulls, snakes, demons, ravens, and a number of runes and symbols that not even Tails could identify. Loose pieces of pathway were easily kicked away. Many of the tombstones had toppled over or sunken partway into the earth, and others had been caked over in decades or maybe centuries of dust, making any names or years difficult to see at a glance.

Sonic thought that was for the best.

It was the fastest way through to Eggman’s most recently active base, Tails said, tapping on the path outlined on the screen of his handheld. The area itself was familiar, though none of the three had ever ventured near this particular part of it: as a looming castle came into view some meters down, Tails pointed to the north-east, where lay Pumpkin Hill, and then north-west, toward Sky Rail.

“Great,” Knuckles said flatly. “Ghost country.”

“Yeaah,” Tails mumbled, barely concealing the underlying apprehension in his voice.

The three of them were silent for a long time.

“Sonic?” Tails finally said, quietly.

“Yeah?”

“Are you—I mean, do you think that—” The young fox hesitated, trying to word his question delicately, as if it wasn’t apparent what he meant to ask. “What, uh, what happened ba—”

“Nothing,” Sonic snapped, immediately regretting it. He rubbed his eyes and sighed. “Sorry, bud. I’m…” He looked down at the ground, toeing the line between honesty and his hatred of vulnerability. A loose piece of stone lay in his way and he kicked it aside. “Confused.”

“Yeah,” Tails replied in a whisper.

“I tried talking to Rouge,” Knuckles said, glancing at Sonic. “She wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“Of course,” Sonic said evenly.

“I can’t figure it out.” Tails’s brow furrowed, and he swiped through a few screens on his handheld. “I couldn’t get a read on him, which could be because I was too far, or because there… was nothing _to_ read, but that… we all saw him, right?”

Sonic kicked another piece of stone aside. His throat felt dry.

“So are you saying we saw his _ghost?_ ”

“N-No! I mean—I don’t know!” Tails frowned at Knuckles. “Can we maybe _not_ talk about that possibility in the middle of ‘ghost country’?”

“It’s not,” Sonic said.

He didn’t look up as he said it to see the look that Tails and Knuckles exchanged.

“So whadd’ya think, Sonic?” Knuckles tried to catch Sonic’s gaze, but the hedgehog refused even an acknowledging glance. “You looked pretty angr—”

“I was wrong,” Sonic said. He swallowed down in an attempt to soothe the burn of his dry throat, blinking a few times. He couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t. “I don’t know how, but it’s _him_. Not a ghost. Not a robot. Not a fake.” He couldn’t feel it. “It’s Shadow. I know it is.”

Silence again.

“Let’s just get outta here as fast as we can,” Sonic said, kicking some dirt behind his heel as he pushed into a run.

“Don’t gotta tell me twice,” Knuckles mumbled behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey everyone! I want to thank everyone for your support in reading this fic, and especially for leaving kudos or comments! things have been sort of difficult for me recently and I haven't had the emotional/mental capacity to reply to them yet, but please know I appreciate each one so much!! thank you!


	4. preamble, iv.: sever all I felt

The aftermath of a battle is sometimes harder than the fight itself.

There’s the squaring away of loose ends: what would happen to Metal Sonic now? what of Eggman? had everyone found what they were looking for? There’s the days and days’ worth of adventuring coming to an abrupt halt—an uphill climb followed by an immediate downward drop and a vague sense of emptiness. There’s the creeping onset of ache and fatigue as adrenaline wears off and normalcy seeps into the space left behind.

Then there’s the clean-up.

Nobody considers the clean-up that has to be done after heroic—albeit destructive—deeds. Nobody thinks about who gets to sweep up the debris, reconstruct collapsed buildings, discard fragments of harmful machinery. Nobody wants to think about the aftermath, whether immediate or months later when our heroes start to wonder if they’re _really_ able to hold the weight of the world—or humanity—or the universe—on their shoulders.

But it had to be done.

Few battles ever ended cleanly, though Sonic always hoped _this would be the one_. He was tired of burning forests and ruined cities and lost lives. It had seemed so much easier when he was a kid, making games out of dumping Eggman’s garbage right back on whatever base he was taking shelter in now, but that was before he one day found himself standing in the flooded ruins of a city that had been bustling only an hour before.

That was before he learned that even he could fail.

And fail again.

So this battle hadn’t ended as poorly as the last two—it didn’t change the fact that there was something very wrong.

Despite his fatigue, Sonic made sure to zip here and there to check in on everyone. He let Knuckles and Tails know that he (very literally) could not have done it without them, taking extra care to comment on Tails’ growth, both proud and ashamed that he had missed so much of it over the past year. He applauded Big and Cream on finding their lost friends, and congratulated Amy on her knack for leadership. He let the Chaotix deal with Eggman. He gave a momentary glance over at Rouge and Shadow, but quickly decided they were handling themselves fine. He returned to where Metal had fallen after the fight.

The robot was gone.

With a deep sigh and a faint pang of guilt, Sonic turned to leave—only to jump back as he saw Rouge standing right behind him.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” she said.

“I wouldn’t know after yesterday,” Sonic mumbled.

Rouge frowned at him. “Sonic, I told you, there’s a good reason why I didn’t say anything. I’m _sorry_. I did _not_ want you to find out like that.” She paused, then hesitated, and then continued: “I don’t know anything yet.”

Sonic swallowed down hard, considering her words. He knew she was right, but felt anger pushing through his own words anyway. “Where was he?”

Again, Rouge hesitated. “I… can’t tell you yet.”

“ _Why?_ ”

“Sonic, listen to yourself. _Look_ at yourself.” Now Rouge’s tone shifted, no longer soft and apologetic, but firm and knowing. “You’re a _mess_. You’ve _been_ a mess. You’re not ready to deal with this, and neither is he. I can’t even tell _him_ anything. I—”

Rouge’s face fell, and she visibly struggled to keep the tears now brimming her eyes from falling, but failed.

“I’m so scared and I barely know anything, Sonic,” she whispered, using the backs of her hands to wipe her eyes. Sonic knew she had a habit of wrapping her wings around herself when upset, and she seemed to be trying hard not to do so now with so many people watching. “We didn’t even get the chance to grill the Doctor for information. We found—” She stopped herself, and shook her head. “I—he— _we_ need more time. All of us.”

Sonic looked down. Chunks of metal and small bits of circuit board littered the ground, and somehow, the sight made Sonic feel sick. A remnant flame of anger still burned in his chest, but it was dwarfed by a stinging vacancy, like a cut brushed by cold wind. It stung worse than his actual cuts and bruises.

“Just… keep him safe, okay?”

“I am,” Rouge said, tone soft again.

She inhaled deeply, dabbed at her eyes with her hands once more, checked either cheek for signs of running make-up, then gathered herself together with a deft grace. She glanced over her shoulder at Shadow, standing some distance away with Omega, and then looked back at Sonic.

“None of this means you can’t talk to him, though. It might even do you both some good.”

Sonic bit his lip. He didn’t say anything, but gave a slight nod before watching Rouge flutter over toward Knuckles. Sonic shook his head, then looked at Shadow, staring long enough that he could have memorized every quill and scar on Shadow’s back, the soft curvature of his red markings, the hint of the deep blue in his fur when the sunlight hit just right.

Sonic exhaled heavily.

The least he could do was apologize for attacking him. See how he was doing. Offer some support.

Sonic stepped forward, holding onto his right arm with his left hand. He must have twisted his left arm sometime during the fight, but it hadn’t crossed his mind when he grabbed hold of the right. Each step felt heavier and heavier, though he treaded silently, turning over words in his head as he tried to decide on the right thing to say. What if Shadow asked _why_ Sonic had attacked him? He couldn’t just tell him _you died a year ago and seeing you again made me think you were a fake_. What if he asked how he died? He couldn’t just tell him _we fought a giant freak of nature together and you couldn’t maintain your energy and started falling and I grabbed your hand but I couldn’t save you and let you fall and die_. He…

Sonic stopped halfway and looked up at Shadow, catching a glimpse of the side of his face as Shadow glanced up at Omega to talk to him.

The sunlight hit, and there was that deep, dark blue, a touch of the night sky he fell from.

The stinging emptiness solidified into crushing anxiety and guilt, and suddenly, Sonic couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t speak.

He couldn’t.

He couldn’t.

He couldn’t.

He turned quickly and left before Shadow could see him. He stopped behind a wall, arms wrapped around himself as he slid down to the ground against it, hyperventilating and eyes wide. He lifted a hand to cover his mouth as the sobs came, aching and breathless, and soon had to bury his face into his knees.

All he could see was Shadow, smiling tiredly at him, telling him it was okay, that he’d done what he was made to. All he could feel was his sweating grip, his desperate attempts to pull Shadow back. All he could remember was Shadow, falling. All he could think of was the ring left in his hands, a symbol of his heaviest failure.

He couldn’t talk to Shadow again.

He couldn’t.

☴

☰

The disappointment that followed Team Dark’s journey was crushing.

As sunrise swept away the dark that had preceded Sonic and his friends’ showdown with Neo Metal, the feeling of victory was quickly overtaken by a gaping hollowness that had before only been covered by the hope of finding answers to fill the hole with. Shadow stood surrounded by strangers celebrating their own victories small and large, but he and Rouge and Omega had achieved… nothing.

No, that wasn’t true.

Rouge did remind them that without their contributing Chaos Emeralds, there would likely have been no win for anyone else. Yes, she was frustrated that a small-time team of eccentric detectives had gotten to the Doctor before they had, and there was a hint of indignation in her tone, but perhaps it was better this way: perhaps the Chaotix would finally throw every legal book at him they could, and she and Shadow and Omega wouldn’t have to track him down again.

Shadow wanted to have the same optimism she did, but the hollowness remained—and every glimpse he caught of that blue hedgehog only seemed to dig into the hole deeper.

He had, briefly, considered questioning Sonic. There was something obviously off about the way Sonic had reacted to him, about the way Shadow had reacted to _Sonic_ —but the thought of being in proximity of the strange hedgehog made his limbs tremble and his stomach turn and his head hurt, and any attempt to approach him in the wreckage turned Shadow’s legs and feet to lead and denied him movement. He just couldn’t, physically or otherwise.

“Maybe I should investigate the base,” Shadow mumbled, nearly drowned out by the post-battle jubilation surrounding them even an hour later as old friends caught up while gathering any remnants of potentially dangerous debris. Sonic’s younger friend, the fox child, had expressed concern that even the smallest piece of circuitry could contain enough information to replicate any of Eggman’s weaponry, and god forbid it fall into the wrong hands. Shadow had been impressed with the young boy’s technologically-minded suggestion, and with no one to catch up with, began to help the clean-up efforts in more obscured areas of the base. Omega, and eventually, Rouge, had joined him.

“If the Doctor keeps separate networks at each facility, maybe there’ll be something _here_ that wasn’t where I was stored.”

He didn’t see Rouge’s flinch at his choice of words.

“I—” Rouge hesitated, but when Shadow looked at her, her expression didn’t match the uncertainty in her voice. “I’m sorry, Shadow, but I already looked. There’s… nothing.”

He didn’t see her staring down at the ground when he looked away, either.

“Oh,” was all Shadow said, throwing another circuit board into the collection pile.

Though Omega declined Rouge’s offer to find him accommodations near the city, he did insist that he carry his two weary teammates back home. The E-series robots had been equipped with solar charging systems since the line’s inception, and he had no need to rest, unlike the (one definitely, the other: status unknown) organic beings.

While Rouge and Shadow rested on either shoulder, Omega carried in his arms a third, smaller being. Inorganic, but charging systems fractured beyond use, unable to move.

“How are we going to do this?” Shadow asked, sitting straight with his arms closed in over his chest, unlike Rouge, who lay against Omega’s head on the opposite side and had long since fallen asleep.

“I WILL CO-OPT AN OLD BASE OF THE DOCTOR’S.”

“Mmm,” Shadow mumbled, eyes fixed on the blurred scenery of the desert. He wished he had any sense of how far from the city they were, but every sight was unfamiliar.

“WORRY NOT. IT IS NOT THE ONE WE WERE CONFINED IN. THE DOCTOR FAILED TO REMOVE PREVIOUS FACILITY COORDINATES FROM MY MEMORY CHIP.”

“You were in another facility before?”

“UNCERTAIN. SCANNING MEMORY CHIPS… UNKNOWN. MEMORY CHIPS HAVE BEEN ALTERED.”

“Hmm,” Shadow mumbled again. An image of his broken doppelgänger android flashed in his mind’s eye, and he looked down at his arms, unfolding them to touch the golden rings around his wrist. One was visibly more worn than the other, and now that he had a moment to think about it, the discrepancy unsettled him. He sat up a bit straighter, and lowered his arms down.

“Never mind. I’ll be glad to use an old base. I’m certain there’ll be enough spare parts there. It’ll save some time looking for them.”

“THIS IS IN DIRECT CONFLICT WITH MY CURRENT DIRECTIVE. AS YOU WELL KNOW. THE METAL SONIC ROBOT MAY AGAIN FIGHT FOR DOCTOR EGGMAN.”

“Why help me, then?”

There was a long moment of silence following Shadow’s question, and though he was aware that his voice wasn’t particularly loud, it seemed unlikely that Omega wouldn’t have heard it.

“I BELIEVE IT IS THE EMOTION KNOWN AS… FRIENDSHIP.”

“Friendship isn’t an emotion, Omega.”

“OBSERVED AND NOTED. YOUR DIRECTIVE IS ILLOGICAL, SHADOW THE HEDGEHOG, BUT I WILL HELP. NOT FOR THE METAL SONIC. NOT FOR THE DOCTOR. FOR MYSELF, AND YOU.”

Shadow looked down at the blue robot, dwarfed in size by Omega and laying mangled in the larger robot’s arms. Shadow couldn’t explain to himself, much less to Rouge and Omega, why the sight of the fallen robot had pulled at something within him. He didn’t know. He was a mess bordering on a wreck after watching Sonic transform, and watching the equally powerful Neo Metal fall from the sky shattered had only added to the complicated tangle of feelings, none of which Shadow could even name. Except for the hollowness.

It was all just shades of hollow.

He had no idea what anyone else would have done with Metal in his weakened state, and it felt wrong to leave him to whatever fate awaited him, even despite all of the damage he had done.

Even despite the dead end journey.

“But that’s just it, Omega,” Shadow said quietly, wrapping his arms around himself once again. “Everything I know is illogical. Nothing has made sense from the day I woke up.”

A government spy who seemed to know about him but offered him nothing in the way of clues, an android doppelgänger, a hedgehog with godlike powers who made Shadow’s chest constrict and head ache—nothing made sense.

It was a quiet ride home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you caught that reference... I'm sorry. but also, I'm not.


	5. addenum: the closest star

Something metaphysical had happened when Sonic transformed.

The journey had been exhausting for Shadow, and it was apparent that the trade-off wouldn’t be worth it. His migraines had only become more frequent the farther they traveled, and his run-in with Sonic barely a day before seemed to be what had pulled the trigger. Standing on a metal platform in the cold of the night above the clouds, in a crowd of faces that felt like looking at distorted images in a dream, while listening to the metallic screech of a megalomaniac robot overhead didn’t help, either.

But he seemed to forget all of it as he watched a curtain of what could have easily been golden stardust wrap around Sonic and seep into his skin, dyeing his fur gold and shifting his emerald blue eyes into a fiery red, levitating him off the ground, awash with literal, visible power. Something inside of Shadow’s chest caught, and his migraine intensified, but the pain now seemed to have a soothing aftereffect the way the burn of a stretching muscle might.

And if he didn’t know better—which was to say, know almost nothing at all—he would have thought that his heart in that moment was the muscle being stretched.

Deny it as he might, he couldn’t deny the lightness in his limbs that the sight of Super Sonic imbued in him. He couldn’t deny the way it pulled at him like a buried memory pulled out of sand by the tide, the way it almost _comforted_ him just to witness, like a vision of divinity—grace, purity. He had wondered upon first sighting the hedgehog in the jungle _why_ and _how_ he could have radiated his faint glow, but now that it was no longer faint but all-encompassing, it made sense. And now he felt that there had been a reason why Sonic reacted the way he had the previous day—now, it made sense.

He coundn’t explain how, but he knew somewhere in the recesses of his corrupted mind that he and this mysterious hedgehog were linked, two opposing poles pulling at the other: he could _feel_ it. Why else would he feel such a strong magnetic pull at first sight and every moment thereafter? It made sense: waking up in the laboratory of a self-proclaimed “evil scientist”, the faces that seemed to recognize him but with an aura of horror, the pull and the fight—it _clicked_.

Sonic was a hero—that much was obvious even when unsaid—and inductive reasoning made it clear that Shadow was not.

And if they were opposing poles pulling at the other, that left only a single role for Shadow to play: the villain. The antagonist.

Inductive reasoning made it clear that his memory loss was for the best.

That the fears haunting his mind for the past three days were truths.

That the fragmented flashes of scenes that kept him awake were likely his own design.

That the intrinsic desire for the inexplicable warmth and glow of Sonic was wrong.

That, more than anything else… he himself must be wrong.


	6. I. a fall from you is a long way down

_three months later_

All dust settles eventually.

A building collapses, a tornado rips through a suburb, a city on fire blazes until it eventually suffocates itself. The damage has been inflicted in the past tense, leaving behind only debris and wreckage, but eventually, the dust settles.

A sentient being awakens in a lab with only rudimentary, base-level instinct and knowledge: how to walk, how to talk, the names of things and their functions. They remember nothing else, are an outsider to a secret that those around them seem to share but won’t divulge, and are forced to gather up the scarce remains of what might have once been their life—or might not have—just to be able to make rudimentary guesses and assumptions and hypotheses about who they were, what they were, their place in existence. They remember nothing else, but their insides feel like a collapsing building, a tornado ripping through their organs, a fire blazing in their veins all at once until there’s nothing but blurry, disfigured remnants.

But eventually, the dust settles.

And so did Shadow find himself surrounded by the dust and debris, the worst of it seemingly past, but the aftermath feeling heavier somehow.

Almost immediately after the defeat of Neo Metal Sonic, delayed only by brief chats with her (obviously) old friends, Rouge insisted that Shadow come and stay with her since he (obviously) had nowhere else to go—nowhere other than a stasis chamber in a lab. Something in the recesses of his mind told him that a stasis chamber was where he belonged, but she would never allow it, he knew—and so he ignored that something in favor of the conscious desire to know what he’d lost recollection of.

So he agreed.

Rouge’s apartment was surprisingly far from the city’s main streets and hubs, contrary to what Shadow might have expected for a government agent. He’d asked if she hadn’t looked for something closer to the municipal and governmental districts for a better commute, and she had told him that she preferred not to live close considering her line of work, and then added that the suburbs were quieter and more peaceful anyway, that it allowed her somewhere to decompress.

For some reason, Shadow had formed an image of Rouge in his mind that fit into the bustle and fast pace of a city, not a quiet and leisurely outskirt where there were more grocery stores and public parks than towering banks or upscale fashion boutiques. Not because of anything he had learned or seen of her in the past few days, but rather, something that felt akin to the instinct he had for the names and functions of things he never even remembered seeing, or for being able to speak and walk with no memory of ever doing either before.

He was glad for the quiet, though; there was enough static and ringing in his head without the added ambiance of city noise.

He had expected to take the couch at night and leave during the day, but Rouge instead placed him into her guest room and balked at the thought of him making himself scarce for hours at a time. It was up to him, she had said, but he needed rest and recovery.

And so he had found himself in a comfortably furnished room aglow with afternoon sun, in a cozy bed with cool sheets and cradling pillows and blankets woven out of oversized yarn, sitting cross-legged and taking in the inviting touches of framed art and a plant with its vines cascading down the edge of a white dresser next to a TV set.

It was homey and warm and felt _wrong_ and for the first few days, Shadow could only lay on the floor, as if the bed was scorching in its’ comfort, wide awake. He was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to feel the relief of sleep, but closing his eyes brought forth blurred images, things he couldn’t place but could feel sharply in his chest and brain and nerves. There was no definition to the images, and even the colors were hard to make out, but he felt them so viscerally, he knew they were horrific. He didn’t know if they were nightmares, or a subconscious attempt to remember something—and if they were, he feared knowing.

But sleep came to him, eventually, and with a little more time, so did the ability to allow himself the comfort of cool sheets and cradling pillows and blankets woven out of oversized yarn.

Shadow’s sense of time had been warped since the moment he had awoken in Eggman’s lab, and if not for the cycle of day and night, he could have easily assumed 48 of 72 or more hours of wakefulness was just one long, unending, dragging day. There was a calendar on the wall in Rouge’s kitchenette, but it was foreign to him; the four-digit number naming the year felt wrong, the month and season felt wrong, the day meant nothing to him. Every flipped page surprised him, even if he had seen all but the number 30 or 31 crossed off the day before.

Months slipped by and he was still every bit as dazed as he had been in the lab.

He often wondered why Rouge had woken him at all.

☰  
☴

Even after the dust settles, it remains as susceptible as ever to being kicked up and agitated again. Not necessarily into a cyclonic shape, not necessarily as devastating as it had been the first time, but in small bursts and gusts that only serve as a reminder of the damage done. Bursts and gusts that invaded open wounds even as they were being treated.

But maybe that analogy wasn’t fitting: after all, it wasn’t as if Sonic had attempted to bandage the wound that had reopened some months ago.

When questioned about Shadow, Sonic’s responses were short and simple, often consisting of only two letters. Was he going to reach out to him? No. Did he want to talk about it? No. Shouldn’t they at least let Shadow know what happened? _No._ He played it off as if he’d moved on, as if he didn’t see the need to interfere when it was obvious Rouge was taking care of things, and he acted like the year he spent haunted by a ghost was behind him now that Shadow was actually _alive_ again.

None of that was true, of course, but the thought of being hovered around and treated delicately and worried about again was suffocating enough to launch him into a claustrophobic panic attack.

And, of course, he ignored all of Rouge’s texts.

He didn’t mean to, at first. It had been only a few days after the Neo Metal showdown, and Sonic was still uncharacteristically exhausted, still recovering from the miserable amalgamation of a poor constitution and everything about Shadow and exerting himself in super form through all of it, and so, he told himself he’d answer later.

Later turned to tomorrow to this weekend to next week to it’s too late now to I can’t answer this text either because then I’d have to explain why I didn’t answer the first to I know she was trying to protect me but I still feel bitter deep down to _leave me alone I don’t want to feel or think about this anymore_.

The thought of seeing Shadow like _that_ again—of not being recognized, of the emptiness that he’d mistaken for inauthenticity—it hurt and he did everything he could to drown even the smallest notion of it.

But he couldn’t bring himself to delete the texts or block Rouge’s number. Especially not when she started sending him small updates despite her attempts to talk going unanswered.

_He’s confused by the calendar a lot. He doesn’t know what year it should be, but he thinks it should start with a 19 and not a 20.  
_ _I asked him why but he didn’t know._

_There are blankets in the guest room that I knitted with my hands and he asked me about it recently. I told him I can’t do it by needle but I’ll show him how I do it by hand._

_Sometimes he stops and stares into space at the mention of certain words. He doesn’t say anything about it. Sometimes I know why—sometimes I don’t.  
_ _That didn’t start with the amnesia, though._

_He likes to wander around the city a lot._

_So he’s knitting now. With needles. What a show off.  
_ _But in seriousness, I think it’s good for him. The fact he can remember the patterns gives me hope._

_I really think it would be good for you two to just sit down and talk._

_No,_ Sonic finally replied.

_Wooow. Look who stopped being a jerk and started being polite._

Sonic rolled his eyes. _Whatever._

 _Yeah, whatever, you were the one leaving me wondering if you ever got anything at all or if you were just being a jerk. Good to know which it is.  
_ _Why won’t you talk to him?_

 _You know why,_ Sonic started to type. He stopped. He erased it and instead wrote:

_You said it yourself. Neither one of us is ready to face all… that._

_You weren’t. But you’ve had time to think. So has he._

Sonic wondered how true it was. He knew _he_ had done his best _not_ to think of it—why would Shadow?

 _He asks me about you sometimes.  
__What am I supposed to tell him_?  
_That’s not rhetorical. I really don’t know._  
_Just come over, Sonic.  
__At least talk to me._

Sonic sighed heavily and put the phone face down on the bed. What _was_ she supposed to tell him? What did she think _Sonic_ could tell him? How did she expect him to open up to her again after she had kept something so important from him? He couldn’t think about that—he couldn’t think at all, not there, in that walled-in space, and so he grabbed his jacket and sprinted out the door empty-handed.

When he returned three hours later, the sun had all but vanished beyond the horizon, but only Rouge’s previous texts remained: _just come over, Sonic. At least talk to me_.

Sonic shook the leaves from his jacket and quills and let his legs fall out from under him, landing him heavily on the bed. He sighed, staring down at the cellphone that felt as heavy as a lead brick in his hands.

_Okay. I’ll come over._

His thumb hovered over the send button. He slid the phone’s keyboard in and out. He inhaled.

_Only when he isn’t there._

He hit send.

There was nothing dramatically different about the apartment since Sonic had last been there.

Sonic had spent enough time there to be comfortable with the layout, to know where the plates and cups and silverware were kept, to no longer feel the need to ask before getting a glass of water or a blanket from the linen closet. Nothing big had changed—the TV still stood center against the living room wall, the décor was the same harmonious shades of white and grey and pink and gold, the same artwork hung framed on the same walls—and yet, something was _off_ , like everything had been moved two inches to the right and the resulting change revoked all privilege Sonic had gained in the year since he started visiting the apartment.

Just knowing, _imagining_ , Shadow partaking in that same space was enough to make it feel forbidden, somehow… sacred. Enough to make him feel like an intruder in a space that had once been a safe haven.

“Will you sit down? You’re making me anxious.”

Sonic sat.

Rouge joined him on the couch, and Sonic could feel her stare brushing up against the side of his face.

The visit, so far, had consisted of: _i_., the awkward quiet of words unsaid and the stumbling ones that weren't— _ii._ , the natural follow-up from awkward quiet, painful small talk— _iii_., the inelegant skirting of the unpleasant topic— _iv.,_ the inevitable broaching of said topic by the more proactive of the two—and, of course, the addendum of Sonic’s endless pacing, and stopping, and pacing, and stopping, and pacing, and—

“I can only imagine how you feel—”

“I feel fine,” Sonic said, though his restless, bouncing legs said otherwise. “It’s just been a while, y’know?”

“Oh, knock it off. You know I can see right through you,” Rouge retorted, wings flicking back before she caught herself and smoothed out the edge in her voice. “I just don’t understand why you’re being so closed-off around _me_ , _here_.”

“Things change, I guess,” Sonic mumbled. “Here doesn’t feel like… _here_ anymore.”

There was a long silence between them, no longer awkward but heavy and strained.

“ _Here_ isn’t the only place in the world,” Rouge finally said. “You’re not even hiding it well anymore—your _friends_ keep asking me to talk to you, and as far as I’m aware, they don’t know anything about you coming over last year.”

“They… don’t,” Sonic said, tracing his thumbs slowly along each finger. Something sludge-like sank slowly into his stomach, leaving behind the familiar, creeping tendrils of guilt and anger and anxiety that would inevitably burrow into and eat away at his innards. “I guess I’m _not_ hiding it well. Whatever there is to hide.”

“I think you’re the only one you’re hiding it from.”

The slow tracing turned into tense pushing. “And what _is_ ‘it?’”

“It…” Rouge trailed off. Sonic could see her wings folding slowly out of his peripheral vision, and the tendrils had already started burrowing. “It’s one thing to accept—that’s such a stupid word for it, it’s just learning to live with the fact that someone—that someone is gone. You learn to live with it, and then—then they _aren’t_ gone and they’re not the same—or they _are_ , but it’s…”

The tense pushing turned into curled fists and whitening knuckles as he listened to Rouge’s words, her strong voice faltering even as it caught and restrained itself over and over. His mouth was dry and now he couldn’t distinguish between anything that currently ate away at him, only that it was horrible and nauseating and how could he have been so selfish to think he was the only one suffering? how could he have completely ignored Rouge’s situation—that she now lived with him, saw him _like that_ every day, that she had _found_ him—

She had found Shadow.

The thought cut through the cacophonic mess of feelings, and now, it seemed to turn itself inside-out, no longer seeping into him but facing outward.

“I don’t know why I agreed to this,” Sonic said, clenching and unclenching his fists. “I don’t know why you even asked me to.”

“What is that attitude for?” Rouge asked, genuinely shocked.

“How can you sit there and act like you know how I feel when—when I didn’t even—”

“Sonic, stop. Take a breath. I’m not trying to ‘act’ like _anything_.”

“How ‘bout I just go back to handling it myself so you don’t have to start?”

“Because you’re _handling_ it poorly.”

Sonic’s eyes were on Rouge so fast that the snap in his voice was dull in comparison. “And how am I _supposed_ to handle it?”

“Sonic—”

“No! How am I supposed to handle it, Rouge? Am I supposed to tell him I’m the reason that he died—hey, _by the way,_ you _died_ and I _let_ you? And then he asks me, well, _why_ did I die in the first place? Oh, y’know, because you were an _asshole_ and tried to blow the up the world but it turns out you were brainwashed into being an asshole and decided not to be anymore and died for it? Oh, you want to know how you’re alive now? Fuck if I know! Do _you_ , Rouge _?_ ”

Rouge was quiet for a moment. “No.”

“ _Did_ he even die?”

“I don’t know.”

Sonic stood and threw his arms up. “ _What_ do _you know? Because whatever it is,_ I _obviously don’t get to know_!”

Rouge sprung to her feet. “I _know_ that there are things I need to tell you but I also _know_ that you obviously aren’t ready to hear it yet! This is why I didn’t tell you anything in the first place! God, Sonic, you—you act so cool and aloof and like you’re above emotions, but you can’t even see how everything you do is a knee-jerk response to a feeling, whether because of it or trying to _suppress_ it. What would you have even done if I told you I found Shadow in one o—” She stopped, bit her lip, and shook her head, laughing emptily. “I can’t even tell you _that_ because I don’t know what you’ll run off and do to yourself or someone else.”

Sonic’s arms had long since fallen back to his sides, and now he became aware of how tightly his fists were balled, and when he swallowed down the lump in his throat and tried to speak, he only then felt how deeply his entire body shook. As he loosened his fists, his relaxed arms felt weak. His voice was no longer a shout, but a struggling whisper. “Why didn’t—how long ago?”

Covering her face with one hand as she rested her elbow on the other, Rouge let a deep, tired breath out and conceded the information: “Two or three days before the jungle. I don’t know. It’s such a blur now.”

There was a quiet _oh_ , but Sonic didn’t know if he thought it or said it out loud as he slowly sat back down on the couch. He wasn’t sure what it was about the statement that slammed into his stomach like a rebounding punching bag: the fact that he had assumed it had been a secret for _so long_ , or the fact that one of Shadow’s first experiences as an again-living being was being pummeled by a stranger for no reason. Or both.

The weight sank into him as he thought once again about the message his impulsive reaction must have sent, his—

acting on his feelings.

Not just to Shadow in the jungle. To Rouge in the living room, too.

Neither of them said anything, instead letting the silence and heaviness settle between them. Sonic saw Rouge pull her legs up onto the couch and into her arms out of the corner of his eye before he lost focus and the rug underfoot became a blur of pinks and grays and his mind began to wander.

For once, Sonic let it.

It wandered to a place he could no longer pretend had never existed, a scene he could no longer pretend had never happened. He let himself feel the cold that gripped at his skin even as his neck burned, the anxiety that cemented brick after brick around itself in his chest, the shaking that betrayed the fear that he hid behind egotistical words that he wasn’t sure he even believed. He let the peripheral vision of stars and dying meteors and blinking lights so old that they shouldn’t have still worked flood his sight. He let himself remember the uncharacteristic shortness of breath that he somehow concealed, even as his head still reeled from narrowly—and literally—cheating death.

He remembered the cold, sharp ridges of the fake emerald, still gripped tighter in his hand than he would be cognizant of until much later.

He remembered its yellow color appearing pale to him in contrast with the _real_ green emerald in Shadow’s hand, and feeling a subconscious sting as he realized that hand shook, too.

“You don’t get it,” came Shadow’s voice, sharply, cutting through all of Sonic’s thoughts and senses. It was no longer quiet and subdued, but it struggled to reach a threatening octave, which only made it more chilling. “None of you do. The _Doctor_ doesn’t. This was never about his idiotic—no, you—you… you could _never_ comprehend— _feel_ this… this…”

Shadow’s hand tightened, and his voice took on a more cutting quality as he said the next word, not in cruelty but in agony, and Sonic remembered the sting pressing deeper as he finally looked into the black hedgehog’s eyes.

“He—he cried.” The words were spoken to no one in particular, but Sonic hung them there in the air for someone, _anyone_ to take, to relieve him of the burden of a vulnerability kept secret for so long. “He told me… that no one—that _I_ —would never understand or… feel… that pain. He… he was crying.”

Sonic let himself remember the seed of doubt that planted itself inside of him even as he raced Shadow to the Eclipse Cannon. He let himself remember the tears streaming down Shadow’s face, magnifying the ARK’s lights cast on his red-gold eyes, swept off his face by the wind that rushed between them. He let himself remember the anguish and desperation in Shadow’s voice, his own slight stumble that nearly cost Sonic the lead. He let himself remember the shattered look on Shadow’s face as Sonic just barely beat him to the cannon, just barely rendered it useless.

He remembered turning those words over and over in his head as he turned Shadow’s inhibitor ring round and round in his hands, an obsessive compulsion repeated almost daily for the next year, as if it would—what? Put Shadow’s soul to rest? Relieve him of that pain? Assuage _Sonic_ of his guilt?

It hadn’t done any of those things.

“I caught him crying on ARK once, too,” Rough whispered—not as a condolence, not as a pity, but as a fact, a shared helplessness, a shared guilt, only magnified by the secret she couldn’t bring herself to even _imagine_ telling Sonic, ever.

What she didn’t know was that he’d find out, in time—and so would Shadow. She didn’t know that her decision in that moment to keep the secret close to her chest for the sake of questionable protection would grow too big to be held in her arms, or Sonic’s, or Shadow’s. She didn’t know how much she would regret deciding that knowledge hurt them more than ignorance did.

But how could she in that moment, as Sonic fell into her arms, body wracked with sobs that echoed the ones down the hall she lay awake listening to at night? How could she, shouldering the pain of two torn apart people, unable to even disconnect them from her own grief and confusion and the pressure of remaining level and wise?

How could she have known?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a fun piece of trivia: this fic is set in the early-to-mid 2000s and sonic owns a kickflip, probably. rouge has a a razr.
> 
> I won't spend the rest of this space relaying my early-2000s cellphone headcanons to you guys. but I _could_. but I won't.
> 
> hope you're all staying safe and (if possible) staying home!


	7. II. ruins

The Egg Base that Omega led Shadow to was a train ride out of town and down a complicated trail in a forest on the edge of a mountain. Shadow was certain that, if he had existed as a sentient being before being contained in a pod in one of Doctor Eggman’s facilities, he had never been in this particular forest before, and yet, it stirred something within him with an even stronger intensity than the frog-ridden jungle had.

But he had realized that a lot of things—the smallest of things, most often—stirred him and pushed him to the precipice of something— and then abandoned him completely. He thought, sometimes, that some of that stirring was a subconscious desire for awareness and connection and nothing more.

He wished desperately that he could have pushed Sonic into that category, but the way the blue hedgehog’s name made his stomach flip even months without seeing him was… unparalleled.

During the first few excursions out of town and into the mountains, Omega insisted on not only accompanying Shadow, but on giving him a ride over the rough terrain, only allowing him down once they had come into the cliffside clearing. On the first trip, Shadow was attentive, trying to memorize the route; on the second, he attempted to predict it; by the fourth, he knew it well enough to stop seeing the path and start hearing the forest.

Rouge called it “mindfulness”. Shadow had no name for it, but “mindful” felt too cerebral: he listened, but he listened so intently that his thoughts and static soon became whispers under the sounds around him, almost too quiet to hear. The unending static and inexplicable bytes of sound and snippets of words and thoughts often obscured his clarity and had to be fought through for any real sense of control over his own head.

Omega had no problem traversing the number of streams that ran through the forest, and even when their path became dry terrain, Shadow could still hear the echoing of water hidden in the forest all around them. Some days, the wind rustled the leaves pleasantly, and others, they stood quiet and still. Invariably, Omega would slow down enough to step on a stick or twig rather than hover over it, causing a satisfying snap underfoot.

Shadow enjoyed the sights of the forest, too: unlike the one he and Sonic had fought in, this forest was nestled deep in the mountains and was thicker and drier, so that when sunlight broke through the canopy overhead it filtered through rather than flooded, and so that the air was crisp and lacked the humidity of the one much further north. The greens were richer and darker. When rain fell during one trip to the base, it was cool but not cold, and hit the leaves with a hollow _pat-pat-pat_ almost rhythmically, and Shadow longed to call the rest of the outing off and lay under a tree in the rain instead.

But a momentary clearing of his head wouldn’t mean much in the end.

Coming out of the forest into the narrow cliffside clearing always took a bit of adjustment, but not as much as entering the abandoned base did. The corridor from the cliffside to the main room was just barely big enough for Omega to enter through, and the slotted steel flooring rattling beneath Shadow even as he glided across it was unsettling—especially knowing the corridor extended a few hundred feet across the forest below, and hovered a few hundred feet more above it.

At least he couldn’t _see_ how high up they were.

Their first visit to the base was almost disorienting. Omega couldn’t say how long the base had been without power, but it was a moot point nonetheless: the entrance door was rusted along its four angled breaks, and Omega had to pry it apart anyway. As for the door at the end of the cold rattling corridor, the thing had been fully wielded shut, and so the robot gave Shadow a two-second warning before assaulting the door with a barrage of blasts that was _definitely_ overkill.

Shadow stood some feet back, arms folded together as he watched the flashing that occasionally gave him a split-second glance into the room before them, but never long enough to piece an actual image together. It was too reminiscent of the way fragments of memories—or hallucinations—or dreams—or _whatever_ —flashed and sparked without forming a whole, and so it wasn’t long before Shadow pushed a hand against his head and closed his eyes.

Eventually Omega withdrew into a ceasefire, and they entered the room. It was dark and musty and certainly not helped by the lingering gunpowder, its smoky remnants intermingling with the scent of the room, and the smell hit Shadow with such force that he stepped back and his stomach flipped. It wasn’t the exact same, but _something_ in that odor slammed Shadow back to the earliest thing he _could_ remember: Rouge waking him from stasis, the looming existential horror and confusion, the few exchanged words before Omega started shooting. It was something about the gunpowder remnants and the distinct bouquet of metal and electronics and something… _something…_

Shadow’s thoughts fell apart as the lights revived and flickered around him before flooding the room with incandescent brilliance which only grew stronger as the smoke and dust settled. He reflexively shielded his eyes from the overwhelming brightness, and had to wait a moment for his sight to adjust.

He really disliked brightly lit rooms.

“THIS IS NOT THE MECHANICS BAY.”

Shadow looked around the room, taking a few steps forward and then one back as he came to a drop off, finding Omega standing in the level below. The robot turned away from a console table to face Shadow, but did not continue to speak again until he made his way back to the top level.

“THE ELECTRICITY I GENERATED WILL NOT MAINTAIN THE BASE’S POWER FOR LONG. WE MUST DESCEND TO THE SHELTER BELOW. REMAIN PATIENT WHILE I DISABLE THE SECURITY PROTOCOLS.”

Shadow scoffed facetiously. “Disable or destroy?”

“I WILL USE FORCE IF NECESSARY.”

Shadow rolled his eyes, stepping aside to let Omega pass, and decided to familiarize himself with the room while Omega disabled—or destroyed—the security protocols in another corner of the base.

Neither he nor Omega had any idea how long it had been since the base—let alone the entrance room—had been utilized, but it was obviously dated. A lot of technology he had encountered since awakening seemed simultaneously too old and too new to him, but the scales tipped in favor of _too old_ here. Not quite antiquated—but definitely not as up-to-date as the base he had woken up in. Especially if he were judging by what little experience he had with the Doctor’s _newer_ tech. Some of it even seemed experimental to him, foreign in its bright greens and blues and rigid edges and exposed metal, and yet there was a familiarity to it, too; an uncomfortable familiarity that washed over Shadow every time his eyes slid past the cylindric capsules formed of green glass that stood floor-to-ceiling on the top level.

Shadow decided he’d had enough of said top level and descended down the stairs.

He approached the console table that he had found Omega at upon first entering the room, and lightly traced a finger along some of the buttons. There were no labels and they were uniform in color, refusing to betray any discernable pattern. Shadow briefly wondered whether their dull uniformity had been a security measure, or if the Doctor was truly _that_ good with spatial memory.

Shadow lifted a finger from his hand’s resting place on the table, hovering over one of the plain buttons as he debated an experimental push—and quickly drew back as the loud, sharp sound of heavy metal clanging against metal startled him well enough that he felt his entire body spring back and a static-electric feeling seized his fingertips and synapses.

“I HAVE SUCCESSFULLY DISARMED THE SECURITY PROTOCOLS ON THIS LEVEL.”

Shadow closed his eyes, exhaled slowly, and the static dissipated.

“Has anyone ever told you how loud you are?” Shadow asked as he climbed the stairs, avoiding looking behind him at the capsules.

“YES. YOU AND ROUGE. AT REGULAR INTERVALS.”

They stepped over the light panels on the floor in the corner—though Shadow took the moment to observe them and the clear casing that ran beneath the translucent floor, running brightly-lit cabling from the panels to some unknown place that disappeared beneath the now-open entrance—and stepped past the threshold.

“MIND YOUR FOOTING HERE. IT IS A LONG WAY DOWN.”

Shadow chanced a glance down into the blackness, where only a few panels of metal grating beneath them kept them from a seemingly-endless descent. Shadow looked up quickly as something inside of him seemed to plummet into his stomach and cut his breath short.

He was beginning to realize that he also _really_ disliked heights.

The panel of metal grating directly in front of them bore a pole with a small control console, just the size of Omega’s hand, and a push of one of two buttons brought them down slowly enough that Shadow couldn’t decide if it made the plummeting feeling in his chest better or worse. Omega led him off the lift as it touched stable ground below, and while the ground level of the base bore the same bright yellows and greens and blues and exposed metals and chaotic patterning of the top level, it was considerably more disturbing.

Broken pieces of what Shadow assumed were earlier Egg Mech bots littered the ground, some smashed beyond any discernable form, others in large enough chunks that they assumed some kind of skeletal remnant. Shadow began to kneel down to one such remnant, a single robotic eye still intact, only to be stopped by the feeling of something oddly soft underfoot. He lifted the foot and from beneath his shoe a crude, familiar, toylike face stared up at him, its decapitated blue head an obvious effigy of Sonic.

Shadow pulled back and lifted his gaze to Omega, who proceeded unbothered by the destruction around him, merely hovering over pieces of blue and red and yellow fabric appendages leaking cotton from their torn sockets. Shadow swallowed down hard, and stepped aside and past the plush head.

“Omega… about the Doctor, is… what is—does he…”

“I HAVE LOCATED THE REPAIR BAY,” Omega interrupted, motioning toward a wall without any visible break in the that indicated the presence of a door. “THE ONE ON THE TOP LEVEL IS A DECOY.”

Before Shadow could respond, Omega turned to the wall and if Shadow didn’t immediately cover his ears and close his eyes tightly as the high-pitched, metallic screeching echoed miserably off the metal all around them, he would have seen the robot’s eyes transform from red to a bright, flickering blue-white. Instead, all he saw was the black-whiteness behind his eyelids as something shifted with the sound that slipped through the cracks, and for a second, a ghastly, white-hot imprint of an image flashed between the shifting light behind his eyelids—a bright white room with a cylindric capsule, floor-to-ceiling—until the screeching sound faded into a grating one and Shadow lowered his hands and opened his eyes, blinking spots of light away.

Omega pivoted toward Shadow. “I APOLOGIZE FOR THE SOUND. IT IS ONLY ACCESSIBLE THROUGH SONIC MEANS. HIGH-FREQUENCY SOUND WAVES UNLOCK THE MECHANISM.”

“I see,” Shadow said, stepping into the repair bay after Omega.

It didn’t seem appropriate to mention how much he had started to rethink the entire thing.

But this was about more than his discomfort, and so they stuck to the plan.

The mechanics bay was immodest, to say the least. The spacious accommodations would give Shadow and Omega more than enough space for their project, including at least four different, separated spaces to work alone or together. There were also more than enough riggings, each hanging from a separate mechanical track that wove around the room on the ceiling, leftover tools left on workbenches and in drawers, and even a few scattered blueprints and notes on a few of the tables. Shadow was particularly pleased to see the leftover papers, even if few, because any insight into the Doctor’s mind could help—even if he wasn’t quite ready to face what he found.

Omega left Shadow to become acquainted with the room while he went to rewire and activate the main power source, and Shadow occupied himself with exploring the room under the fading and flickering lights until they eventually roared back to life, exposing the dark slate grey panels of the room and the sleek steel tables. The ward was much less chaotic-looking than the rest of the base, much more blue-grey and orderly, more sophisticated, almost.

The next few visits were similarly uneventful, if not somewhat uneasy for Shadow. There was a trip or two for preparation and cleaning, another for an electronics/power check, another for the actual rigging—and soon enough, Shadow knew his path through the ruins by heart, nature swathing around him and insulating him just enough from the rattling grates and long-ways-downs and whatever pieces of robot or doll or other debris he may have missed, just enough for him to retain the resolve to spend hours in the blue-grey mechanics bay.

Because what was there to do when surrounded by a fog than occupy oneself?

Shadow had a small set of activities that he liked to cycle through, distractions to pick up when he found his head overwhelmed with thoughts and his chest constricted with unidentifiable feelings or when series of blurry, floating, fragmented images ended his sleep and summoned tears for reasons he couldn’t understand.

He liked to knit, of course. Something about pulling oversized yarn through oversized loops calmed him, and it wasn’t long until he wanted to challenge himself with needles and smaller yarn and smaller loops. He had started reading through Rouge’s personal library of books, distracted enough by their content to not think about possible implications of how quickly he read through them. He wandered around often, not just in the city, but in neighboring cities and the countryside and as far as he could go before something invisible seemed to pull him back. He found himself drawn to the softness of flowers, frequenting floral shops and familiarizing himself with as many genera and species as he could.

And then there was the repair ward—

and Metal Sonic.

For as much trouble as the robot had caused, directly and indirectly, Shadow’s indescribable empathy for Metal had remained. Empathy, and… a selfish curiosity.

The very real possibility that he, too, could be a synthetic being composed of wires and processors and metal had never once left his mind.

He wondered often about the android they had found some months ago, about what it had been doing there and how it had been destroyed and why. He wondered if the android knew it was an android, or thought it might be an organic being. He wondered if the android, like him, had woken up one day with a sense of emptiness, of something missing, and had gone to search for answers.

Shadow wondered if, as the android was being destroyed, it too saw blood where there was none in that split second before shutting down forever. He had been able to see the mechanical insides of the android, as had Rouge and Omega. He had never shown them the gash in his hand, but he wondered, if he were to slice into himself—would they see machinery where he saw blood?

As often as he thought about it, he couldn’t bring himself to find out like that—and so, fixing Metal Sonic was his next logical option.

The robot had, after all, been the one to tell Shadow that he had no past to remember.

It was always difficult not to think about when working on Metal, but even more so in the less-complex moments of repair, and as Shadow mechanically polished the robot’s arm now, it was a resounding echo caught within his distorted reflection just barely visible through his unfocused gaze.

Polishing Metal’s casing post-repair session had become a habit bordering on obsessive compulsion, even if he knew parts of Metal’s shell would have to come off again later, or would inevitably become scuffed and dirty again before final repairs were complete. But he couldn’t just _leave_ Metal like that, no matter how much excess time it took. It felt wrong.

Having properly buffed away the last mark, he gave the metallic blue and silver arm a few more passes with a clean polishing rag and focused his eyes just long enough to observe the sheen. Satisfied, Shadow pulled away from Metal, scooting his wheeled stool back as he did so, and looked up at the inert robot delicately rigged to a track of wires and cables, then quickly averted his gaze.

Something inside of him hated seeing Metal in that tangle of rigging.

Shadow turned and pushed himself over to the closest table, where lay a meticulously-organized layout of papers, his logbook, and a second notebook, above which more papers and notes were tacked to a grey corkboard on the wall. If there was anything Shadow had learned about Doctor Eggman while working in the commandeered base, it was that the Doctor’s technical knowledge and skill far surpassed anything Shadow seemed to innately know, and reverse engineering one of his most complex, advanced creations had not been easy.

There were no schemata to be found for Metal Sonic. Nothing on the E-Series. Nothing about him.

Shadow exhaled as he reviewed the notes he had taken throughout the day, then picked up his pen and completed the entry:

  * _Some essential wiring may be started before minor body repairs._
  * _Still in need of replacement solar unit or else frequent power failure._
  * _Post-wiring power test to be conducted to assess Metal’s ability to maintain_



Shadow stopped with pen held barely a centimeter above the page, hesitating on his choice of wording before concluding with _life._

He jotted a few quick lines down in the second notebook before lifting a wine red crossbody bag off the floor as he stood up, stuffing the notebook inside and slinging the bag over his shoulder, across his chest. He gave the room and Metal one last look over, switched off the lights, and exited with his hands deep in his coat pockets, listening for the sound of the automatic lock behind him.

By now, the escalating heights out of the base were muscle memory enough that Shadow could disconnect just enough from his surroundings to stave off the anxiety they had previously brought him. After all, there was the forest to look forward to, and at this time of year, a better chance of rain. There was the way the crisp mountain air leveled his breathing and slowed his racing heart, the way the raindrops washed away the disconcerting thoughts that the base and everything about it brought, the way the smell of pine and dirt and water eased the height-induced nausea.

It felt, in a way, like seeing Sonic had: sickening and frightening, but worth it for the beauty waiting for him on the other side of it all.

Of course, he hadn’t seen Sonic in weeks.

He knew it was better that way, though.

Shadow looked forward to the train ride back into the city, too. There was something about taking the time to slow down, being able to lean back in his seat with eyes closed that lulled him; the rumbling of the train’s wheels and the occasional conversation between strangers down the car became white noise and allowed him a moment of respite. Sometimes, he nodded off—not ever entirely asleep, but not entirely alert or anxious, either—and sometimes, he watched the scenery pass by, fascinated by the endless expanse of ocean that stretched all the way up past Station Square’s coast to cities and shorelines beyond.

And so he left the abandoned base nestled deep within a canyon in the Mystic Ruins, followed the slowly-wearing path he and Omega had begun to wear into the forest floor, ascended the mountain and boarded the train enroute to Station Square.

It wasn’t a day for nodding off or gazing past the windows, but another benefit of slowing down on the train was the time it allowed him to think and plan.

Shadow had bought a spiral-bound notebook early into his stay with Rouge, afraid to lose any hint of his past or identity, but perhaps more afraid to lose those he knew—again, or for the first time, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t want to lose _anything_ again. So he wrote.

He wrote observations—facts about those around him—notes about things he experienced—studies of the unfamiliar world he found himself in—sketches of plants and buildings and signs and Chao and small animals and anything else that caught his attention—the date, always, always—knitting patterns—thoughts—dreams—fears and the fringes of emotions he couldn’t quite place—food he could stomach—the best teas—the things about Sonic he didn’t want to lose after letting him go—calendars—gratitudes where he found any—

He wrote so much and so often that the spiral-bound notebook started to tear off its metallic spine, fold in the corners, crinkle and crease and become “well-loved,” as Rouge described it, handing him a smaller but thicker disc-bound notebook so that he could arrange and organize and add and rearrange as he wanted. He figured out how to make dividers with thick crafting paper, bought a leather wrap to keep it nice, affixed a pen loop to the inside, and transcribed his old notebook carefully, creating something much neater.

It was pure, unbridled comfort: the ability to organize thoughts and words in his hands if not in his brain.

Even though he kept the notebook on him most days, and knew it was safe tucked away at home—at Rouge’s home—at the apartment, and that he didn’t even need to hide it because he had long since given up on trying to figure out why he trusted her unconditionally from day one, the section he had dedicated to Metal Sonic’s repair was hidden between unrelated dividers, as if something so trivial would keep prying eyes from leafing through the entire thing.

Shadow slid a finger between a few pages to find the discreet, untabbed, plain-paper divider between the previous section and the one where he kept his notes on Metal—he couldn’t help himself from using _something_ to divide the two—and slowly leafed through the pages. Kept separately from the notebook at the workshop, the section included an abbreviated log, lists of parts needing repair, parts missing, repairs needed as he found them, steps taken in each fix, precise diagrams, guesses at what he didn’t know.

Because he and Omega had failed to find any of Metal’s schemata, Shadow had taken to reverse engineering his own diagrams, but they did little to help with the missing pieces he couldn’t identify. He tapped his pen absently against the open notebook rested on his lap, the list of parts needed, woefully lacking in bullet points. With some frustration, Shadow moved past the list and rested his elbow on the leg folded beneath him, and his head against his hand, pen still woven between his fingers as he read through his logs and notes and diagrams for some clue of what to do, even.

It was only on the third pass that a stray thought popped into his head: _perhaps Miles would know…_

Shadow shook the thought away quickly. He wouldn’t even know where to start, how to reach out to the young teenager, how to avoid seeing…

A gentle, melodic chime interrupted his thoughts as the train pulled to a slow stop.

Shadow pulled his long coat around him, sheathed his notebook in its protective leather wrap, and dug around in his bag for his cellphone as he disembarked and descended the stairs. He stopped in the lobby and opened a new text message, but only got as far as choosing Rouge’s number from his small list of contacts before the boarding crowd nearly knocked the phone out of his hands as others walked briskly past him, sometimes catching his shoulder or arm as they did.

He made his way through the evening rush as politely as possible, careful to audibly apologize even to those who bumped into him, and did his best to avoid any stray stares. He had done this enough times by now to know to duck his head and keep walking—but it didn’t stop the disquieting thought that they knew something he didn’t.

Shadow exited the station, glad to find the streets emptier as the sun sunk further into the ocean behind him, sidewalks mostly lined with small shops that didn’t attract much attention. A local shopkeeper or two would smile or wave as he passed by, but by and large, other people kept to themselves.

He preferred it that way.

It hadn’t taken long for Shadow to realize how much Rouge enjoyed being around other people, and how much he _didn’t_. It should have been apparent much earlier—the way Rouge had seemed so eager to catch up with her old friends after they had taken down Neo Metal Sonic, while just _knowing_ they were there made Shadow breathe a bit shallower—and that wasn’t even taking _Sonic_ into consideration.

Lately, she seemed to be having friends over more than she went out to see them—maybe because Shadow had been gone from the apartment in increasingly longer blocks of time. Maybe because he had gotten a bit more comfortable around her. It still seemed wrong to intrude on her time with people she knew before him, and so he did his best to give her the space.

He often wondered how much of her life she had changed for him.

As he traveled down the sidewalk, Shadow pulled out his cellphone and slowed to a stop as he slowly cycled through letters, letting out a short breath every time he pressed too soon and an _a_ became a _b_ , or when he was too slow to press so that his word became _2lm6st_. He had no idea how Rouge dealt with these infernal things, but she assured him it was a necessity, and wouldn’t let him refuse her gift.

Torture device was more like it, he thought with a brief, slight smile. He’d have to tell her that—it was exactly the kind of thing she’d laugh at.

He picked up his pace again as he placed the final ending period and hit send, only half-glancing up in two-second intervals as he waited for the confirmation. Reception was spotty until he was in the city proper, and he couldn’t _not_ compulsively watch the phone to make sure the text went through. It didn’t help, he knew, but he also couldn’t shake the feeling that looking away would _jinx it._

And it was this unfortunate obsessive thought that led to a more unfortunate encounter.

Shadow only looked up in time to see a blur of color as he collided with the person rounding the corner in front of him—or rather, as _they_ collided with _him_ , since it was Shadow who fell backwards onto the cold cement and the other person who toppled over him, like some long-deserved karmic payback.

Especially when he caught his breath and opened his eyes to see who it was.

Shadow couldn’t tell if he said Sonic’s name aloud or not, but he erred on the side of _not_ since his mouth was too dry to form any sound and his head was reeling from the one-two hit of a physical fall and mental shock. They stared at one another for what felt like an hour of a second—and all Shadow could think, in this order, was _why is this happening?_ , punctuated with a brief thought on how nice Sonic’s eyes looked, illuminated by the city lights, and then finally, _what the fuck._

“O—Oh,” Sonic stammered, snapping them both out of the hour-long second as he pushed himself to his feet, realized himself, and then offered a hand to help Shadow up as well. “Hey, Shadow. Uh, long time no see, huh? Haha.”

Slowly, uncertainly, Shadow took Sonic’s hand—and immediately felt a jolt through his body as Sonic pulled him up, and for a moment, he wondered if the jolt had made its way to Sonic, too, as the blue hedgehog stopped stammering and stared down at Shadow’s hand.

Shadow felt an urging to let go, but something inside of him plummeted as he did and triggered a vertigo-like sensation.

Sonic looked up from his now empty hand and stared at Shadow.

There was something about Sonic’s expression that Shadow… didn’t necessarily _dislike_ , but something that, in its softness, set a stone of guilt square in Shadow’s chest—guilt that was simultaneously too heavy and too compacted to be about something as trivial as a sidewalk collision or something as pointless as their confrontation in the jungle. He felt like he needed to look away.

But the blue and pink neon lights were playing so nicely with the green of Sonic’s eyes that Shadow was ready to accept all the guilt in the world just to look for a moment—until he remembered that Sonic knew something about Shadow that the black hedgehog didn’t know himself, and that he wasn’t strong enough to accept even his own guilt, and so look away he did.

“Oh, you, uh, dropped this.”

Shadow looked back again to see his dropped cellphone in Sonic’s hand, and so he reached over gingerly to take it back.

“Thanks,” Shadow finally said, quietly.

Sonic’s expression changed as Shadow spoke, and Shadow turned the phone in his hand, trying to decipher what the changed look meant. He wished that Sonic would just tell him what he was thinking. He wished anyone would tell him _anything_.

“So, new ring, huh?” Sonic was pushing a smile now, wiping away any trace of his former, indecipherable expression. “It looks better—nicer, you know? I mean, it’s not all scuffed up or any… It’s, uh… nicer? Not like…”

Sonic trailed off, fussing with the folds around the wrist of his glove.

“Thank… you,” Shadow said. He decided that rather ask _what_ he was talking about, he would give Sonic some reprieve. He could at least recognize when the blue hedgehog was uncomfortable. “It’s… nice to see you.”

Sonic’s eyes snapped back to him. “Really?”

“Yes.” Shadow didn’t know why he was admitting it, or what to follow up with, and so all he could think to say was: “Rouge tells me you’re…” Shadow tried to remember the exact turn of phrase. “‘Kind of a big deal’?”

“She said that?” Sonic laughed, and now, there was a genuineness there that eased Shadow just slightly, just enough that he gave a faint smile. “Not to brag but like, I kinda am, but like, it’s nothing. I bet sure she said it sarcastically, anyway.”

“I can never tell with her,” Shadow said without thinking. “I’ve never been good at detecting subtle sarcasm.”

Shadow stopped. _Of course_ he would remember something about himself and it would be a _useless_ something. He shifted slightly, digging his hands deeper into his coat pockets, as if Sonic was scrutinizing his words and he was awaiting the verdict.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it,” Sonic said, his voice noticeably brighter now. Shadow’s hands relaxed. “Sometimes even _I_ miss it, which is sayin’ something, since I never hear the end of it from Knux about how Tails ‘got his attitude’ from me and my sarcasm. But you know how Knux is—”

Sonic’s words stopped abruptly and the blue hedgehog lowered his gaze.

Shadow pushed his nails into his palm with one hand and gripped his phone tightly with the other again. He felt the compacted guilt constrict a bit more.

Neither of them said anything.

Shadow turned his phone over and over in his jacket pocket. He wished it would buzz. He wished he could just Chaos Control back to the apartment, but even if he had an Emerald, his control over his chaos energy was shaky at best. He wished Sonic would just _laugh_ again and talk about whatever he wanted.

He wished he could disappear.

“I’m, uh,” and now Shadow was the one stuttering, “I have to… get back…”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sonic said, too quickly. “Got it, yeah. With Rouge getting worried and all, yeah.”

“Yes,” Shadow said, both disappointed and relieved for the excuse that Sonic offered him. “Right.”

“Right,” Sonic echoed. “So, I’ll, uh… see’ya.”

Sonic turned slightly, paused, and then faced Shadow again. He looked at his feet for a moment, and Shadow couldn’t help but follow his gaze, only now noticing the much nicer pair of sneakers Sonic was wearing now than he had last time Shadow had seen him. Purpleish-blue with holographic streaks of blue and yellow. Shadow liked them.

“Hey, um, actually… Y’know what? We, uh… we should… talk sometime.” Sonic finally said, lifting his eyes to hold Shadow’s gaze even as he seemed to struggle to hold his own. “Not… like, not like this. I mean, _really_ talk… y’know?”

Shadow blinked, now very aware of his own breathing and how offbeat it had become. “Y-Yes,” he stammered again, quickly. “Talking is—if that’s, uh—” _stuttering is clumsy, Shadow_ , he heard somewhere at the back of his mind “—I would like to talk if that’s your wish as well.”

Sonic laughed a little, and though Shadow didn’t see what was funny, it felt warm and so he didn’t question it. “Yeah. It is. I mean, I do. I wanna talk.”

“So… do I,” Shadow said.

“Cool, okay,” Sonic said.

“Okay,” Shadow said.

“Okay,” Sonic smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who's back  
> back again


End file.
